Why this Orthodox Rabbi supports Trump

I am going to vote for the candidate that protects the Constitution and makes America what it can be - and was.

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, 27/10/16 02:09

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fisch

צילום: PR

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer

The writer is adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served for most of the past decade on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and Israel National News. Other writings are collected at www.rabbidov.com .

I am an Orthodox rabbi. I am also an attorney and an adjunct professor of law. I clerked 20 years ago for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Boggs, one of the most brilliant minds I ever have known in any of my walks of life, soon thereafter served as chief judge of the Sixth Circuit.

Of course, I am disgusted by the stories that dominate the election campaign. I am disgusted as a law professor, an attorney, a father of daughters, and as a rabbi. Women making accusations that they have been sexually abused — Paula Corbin Jones who received an $850,000 settlement from Bill Clinton; Kathleen Willey who went to Bill Clinton in the White House, desperate for a job after her husband killed himself; Juanita Broaddrick, a Clinton volunteer who insists he raped her; the new list of women whose names I am only now learning who say that Donald Trump groped or kissed them against their will. The abused women whose reputations and lives were destroyed by Hillary Clinton, as she defended her husband’s public profile after each “bimbo eruption.” Hillary referred to victims as “looney tunes” and worse, her team including the likes of James Carville and Sidney Blumenthal characterized them as “trailer trash,” and Hillary most infamously ruined the life of 12-year-old Kathy Shelton, raped by a 41-year-old whom Hillary was required to defend. There was nothing wrong in Hillary defending—every accused criminal deserves a good defense. But Hillary destroyed the girl in the process and proceeded years later laughing about that case and regaling an interviewer with anecdotes of that tragedy.

All of it disgusts me. So I have decided that on November 8 I am not going to vote for Clinton or Trump. Instead, I am going to vote for the federal judiciary. Along the way, I also am going to vote for an authentic economic recovery that will include repatriating trillions of dollars back home, for a stronger American footprint in the world, for a border that will protect Mexico from free-flowing American weapons that feed their drug cartels and that will protect America from the influx of potential terrorists and murderous drugs that now easily can pour through our porous borders.

I am going to vote for a process that restores civil harmony in the inner cities by restoring respect for law enforcement even as we begin to address legitimate concerns that responsible African Americans have raised about bias. I am going to vote against sanctuary cities. I am going to vote for a stronger military that, after the past eight years, we now unfortunately will need to protect from Iranian terror exports and North Korean adventurism.

I am going to vote for an end to bullying and ceaselessly blaming and threatening Israel, our strongest and only truly reliable ally in the Middle East, the only country in that region that truly shares America’s deepest values. And I am going to vote to stem the perilous slide away from America’s traditional social core values of hard work, self-help, trust in G-d, respect for religion’s central place in our lives, and the sanctity of life.

If we do not have a robust rebound from the terrible recession of nearly a decade ago, let it not be because I voted based on some filthy talk that a candidate spoke 11 years ago. Let young Americans in our inner cities not continue to die in an endless spiral of gang violence because a tape recorded braggart childishly impressed a gullible young news journalist. And how sad it is to see men—Hillary’s male enablers like John Podesta, Rob Mook, Bill Clinton, and others no less cynical on the other side—preying on women’s legitimate and decent values by trying to sway voting blocs one way or the other based on issues other than the life-and-death concerns on today’s table.

How will we explain to our sons or grandsons who one day would be sent overseas to fight to stop an enriched Iran—nuclear-enriched, hundreds of billions enriched—when America’s continued weakness and failure to stand strong now ultimately will leave us with no choice but to fight later? Shall we tell them: “Well, you see, we did not elect the candidate who would have stood stronger because 11 years earlier he was recorded saying the most disgusting things as he bragged on a bus to an impressionable journalist?”

We elected John F. Kennedy. He certainly was no saint. U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) was deemed an elder statesman and moral vicar, despite a background of frolicking that reached its nadir with a woman left to drown at Chappaquiddick. We elected Bill Clinton twice, because the Silicon Valley economic explosion was afoot, and the cultural and media elite saw no reason to let a stained dress disrupt that. To this day, Clinton—one of only two U.S. presidents ever impeached—is the most honored statesman at Democratic Party conventions.

Oh, how I wish this were a different election with different candidates! But my choice is set. One candidate will work for open borders and has a lifetime of proven public life that is stamped by two overriding symbols: failure and lying.

African Americans and Latino Americans deserve what I have. They deserve economic opportunity, the kind of fabulous education that I got and that I gave my kids, which opened the kinds of doors that food stamps and “entitlements” never will match. The Obamas and Clintons know what a fabulous education is all about; they gave it to their kids. We owe African Americans and Latino Americans the best schools, charter schools, and magnet schools, where educators are selected and promoted based on merit and academic results and not coddled by arcane teachers’ union rules.

I certainly will not vote for Hillary, the Clinton cabal, or her village pocked by fragmented special-interest sub-constituencies, each bewailing its own trigger-warning list of “microaggressions.”Moreover, we owe them the respect they deserve to aspire for what we cultivated in our own families: the message that Government assistance and “caring” never will replace or match the kind of wealth and personal pride one can acquire and attain by looking to one’s own hard work, devotion to family, sensible risk-taking, and willingness to delay gratification briefly in order to reap greater rewards in time. Trust in government never can replace trust in G-d, and every boy deserves to grow up with a working father as a role model.

Perhaps most of all, I care about the federal judiciary—not just the Supreme Court. I remember what the Sixth Circuit was like when I clerked there 20 years ago. Our judicial system has been changed. Most of us do not see it. Most federal appellate decisions never get appealed, and most that get appealed never get considered by grant of certiorari. Therefore, when a federal appellate circuit issues a ruling, that becomes the law for four or six or more states.

When perfectly reasonable voter-identification laws get thrown out, I look for the names of the judges who ruled. I see the Democrat presidents who appointed them. And when the Constitution is judicially upheld and a brazen presidential overreach is stopped by a court order, affirmed by an appellate panel, I look and see that those judges were appointed by Republican presidents. Our entire federal judiciary is on the line in this election, and these Article III judges all are appointed for life.

How does one explain to a victim of an unfortunate appellate panel’s ruling that “I could have voted for a federal judiciary that would protect the Constitution and refrain from legislating from the bench, but a braggart was recorded 11 years earlier, boasting in filthy terms, saying that he then did filthy, disgusting things that were less filthy and disgusting than what his opponent actively defended her husband and clients for doing. So I am sorry for losing the federal judiciary. And for abandoning America’s influence in the world. And for allowing more destructive drugs to enter the country illegally by permitting the border to become even more porous. And for the economy remaining mired with no meaningful job growth or income gains. And for the loss of affordable health coverage and for losing access to preferred doctors. And for not voting finally for change to stem the steep decline in the Judaeo-Christian religious and social values that built this great country and that shaped America’s extraordinary character.”

I cannot do that and cannot explain that. So I certainly will not vote for Hillary, the Clinton cabal, or her village pocked by fragmented special-interest sub-constituencies, each bewailing its own trigger-warning list of “microaggressions.”

I cannot vote for a politically correct mélange of “safe spaces” that are truly safe for none but the Clinton-connected elite whose multilingual education boasts a fluency in Latin consisting primarily of the “quid pro quo” pay-for-play corruption they spread everywhere they go, from secret Wall Street back-room speeches at $225,000 a hit, to Qatar million-dollar birthday presents payable to Bill Clinton and redeemable in the State Department.

Therefore, while I most definitely am not voting for Trump the Flawed, I definitely am casting my ballot for Donald Trump, the engine for the change America now needs.